azily to them as his two guards loosed him
for the moment.

A high call from the Martian Master ripped across the hall and was
answered by a shattering roar of hissing voices as Martians and
machines surged madly toward them. Randall and Lanier in a single leap
were out of the centipede-machine, and in an instant had half-dragged
Milton with them in a great leap up to the edge of the humming
transmitting chamber.

* * * * *

Milton was shouting hoarsely to them over the wild uproar. To enter
that transmitting chamber before the destined moment was annihilation,
to be flashed out with no receiver on earth awaiting them. They
turned, struck with all their strength at the first Martians rushing
up to them. No rays flashed, for a ray loosed would destroy the
chamber behind them that was the one gate for the Martians to the
world they would invade. But as the Martian Master's high call hissed
again all the countless crocodilian forms in the great cone were
rushing toward them.

Braced at the very edge of the humming, light-filled chamber, Randall
and Lanier and Milton struck madly at the Martians surging up toward
them. Randall seemed in a dream. A score of taloned paws clutched him
from beneath; scaled forms collapsed under his insane blows.

The whole vast cone and surging reptilian hordes seemed spinning at
increasing speed around him. As his clenched fists flashed with waning
strength he glimpsed crocodilian forms swarming up on either side of
them, glimpsed Lanier down, talons reaching toward him, Milton
fighting over him like a madman. Another moment would see it
ended--reptilian arms reaching in scores to drag him down--Milton
jerking Lanier half to his feet. The Martian Master's call
sounded--and then came a great clanging sound at which the Martian
hordes seemed to freeze for an instant motionless, at which Milton's
voice reached him in a supreme cry.

_"Randall--the transmitter!"_

For in that instant Milton was leaping back with Lanier, and as
Randall with his last strength threw himself backward with them into
the humming transmitting-chamber's brilliant light, he heard a last
frenzied roar of hissing cries from the Martian hordes about them.
Then as the brilliant light and force from the chamber's walls smote
them, Randall felt himself hurled into blackness inconceivable, that
smashed like a descending curtain across his brain.

The curtain of blackness lifted for a mome